Burned
by chandeliersaroundme
Summary: A short drabble on Sam's death in season 2. Life is slippery, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't hang on. He felt Sam's head loll against his own, as if he were sleeping, and knew then that his baby brother was most surely dead.


"_Sam, look out!"_

It was raw, his cry.

That's the only way he could describe it.

And it emerged from him a blistering fire.

He caught the injured boy just as he fell to his knees, his own heart quivering as he put up a calm façade. He couldn't imagine, refused to imagine, that he could possibly lose everything important to him quickly.

Sam continued to make this grisly gasping sound as his lungs fell away from his control. His knees were useless beneath him, but like so many times before, when he fell, he was caught by his brother. His brother was always there.

_That was a comfort,_ Sam realized. Sam wished then that he still owned his voice. He wanted to say thank you. He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to say that he loved Dean.

Dean was the last conscious thought he ever truly had in this life.

Dean repeated his brother's name, trying to make him hold on. But life is slippery, and sometimes, you have no choice but to slide down.

Sammy Winchester didn't really have a choice when that knife slithered into his back. His brother knew this, but when has he ever accepted reality? How could he?

As he did so many times before, he cradled the overgrown body of his brother to his chest, still whispering his name like a prayer to no one.

He made false promises to the fading spurt of life in his arms, and tried to hold him up, tried to be the spine that had so easily fallen apart.

It wasn't enough.

Oh, how cruelly _raw_ and _exposed_ and _inflamed _his soul felt.

He didn't really notice that his own breaths came twice as fast (were they attempting to breathe for them both; the little boy, barely considered a man? And his older brother, the boy who wanted nothing more than to be _good_? To be _loved_?). He didn't notice that his heartbeat had tripled and that his lungs had condensed into ice. He didn't notice that he had fully and completely lost his will to exist.

He made his decision long before he had even weighed the options. Sammy _must _live, Sammy must _never_ be harmed. He was Sammy's protector, and damn him should he fail at his most sacred task.

"_Damn me," _he bitterly laughed to himself, _"What an idea."_

He was pulled back to remorseless reality when he felt the quivering, sweaty skin of his brother lose that spark of human life that Dean was trained to recognize. He felt his only family go limp against him; he felt that last bit of air seep from the Sam's lungs and heard it as it seemed to whisper maliciously that he had failed. He felt the shaggy-haired boy's head loll against his own, as if Dean had, like so many times before, rocked him to sleep (was it really so long ago?), and he knew then that his baby brother was most surely dead.

The world seemed to look at the scene in silence, not even demons or God himself believing that one of the _Winchester boys _had died. Not even Death could fathom it, and no reaper had yet had the courage to emerge and whisk little Sammy away to Heaven; all were too afraid of the man who had him curled within his trembling arms.

People say that it is then when Dean Winchester finally lost his innocence. He survived a lot in his lifetime: the massacre of his mother, living as a hunter at a tender age, the disappearance and death of his father…but, he had always managed to spring back. Somehow, even after all of this horror, this nightmare of a life, he could still laugh and joke, and have the tiniest semblance of normal. Somehow, Dean managed to _survive_.

Maybe it was family. Maybe family became the constant in his life that he needed, that he so desperately depended on.

But what on this forsaken earth is he supposed to do when all that remains of it is leaning lifeless against his breaking heart?

What is he supposed to do?

What else could he do?

"_SAM!"_

And I swear, for a moment, Heaven and Hell themselves were speechless.


End file.
